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Oast Beef with Yorkshire Puddding
Beef for roasting should be carefully trimmed, rubbed with salt and pepper, and then skewered and tied into shape. The lean parts should be rubbed with drippings and the whole well dredged with flour. The roast should then be placed, lean slide upward, in a pan on a trivet or rack, and set in a hot oven to sear quickly and thus prevent an escape of the juices. When the meat has been lightly crusted, the heat may be moderated and the roasting continued. Ten minutes to each pound of beef is a sufficient allowance of time if a rare roast is desired; if the meat is liked well done, twelve minutes or more should be allowed to a pound. Half a hour before the meat is done, if Yorkshire pudding is to be served with it, pour out all drippings, return the meat to the pan, and have the pudding ready to put in.
A method rather than a formula: the book assumes you already know how to mix Yorkshire pudding batter and gives only the timing and the handling of the fat. A few of its assumptions need adjusting for a modern oven and a modern thermometer.
- The two oven stages, in numbersThe two oven stages -- The book gives no numbers, only "a hot oven" to sear and then moderated heat. In a modern oven that corresponds roughly to 450-475F for the searing stage and 325-350F afterwards; sear until the surface is lightly crusted, as the text directs, then drop the dial without opening the door longer than necessary.
- Ignore minutes per pound, use a thermometerTen minutes to the pound is only reliable on a large, evenly shaped rib roast. Pull the meat at 120-125F internal for rare, 130-135F for medium rare; it will climb another 5-10F while resting. On a small roast the per-pound rule is unreliable, so check with a thermometer rather than the clock.
- Resting is assumed, not statedThe book does not mention it. Rest the roast 20 minutes under loose foil before slicing. Note that in this method the meat goes back into the pan for the last half hour, so the pudding cooks alongside it rather than after it.
- Dredging with flourThe flour-and-dripping coat is a common period habit for building a browned crust. It still works, though flour can scorch at high searing heat; a dry surface with salt and fat alone will brown well too.
- "Pour out all drippings" needs qualifyingPour off the fat for gravy, but the pudding pan must be smoking hot with two or three tablespoons of that beef fat in it before the batter goes in. A cold or dry pan gives a flat, pale pudding.
- The batter the book leaves outA common working proportion is roughly 1 cup flour, 1 cup milk and 2 large eggs with a pinch of salt. Bake at 425-450F, which means the pudding wants a hotter oven than the finishing roast had.
- Trivet or rackAny wire rack that lifts the meat clear of the pan will do. The point is that the underside roasts rather than stews in its own liquid.
- YieldReckon on 12 oz bone-in rib or 6-8 oz boneless per person, and a 9x13 pan of pudding for six.
Yorkshire pudding began as dripping pudding, a batter set beneath meat turning on a spit so that the fat and juices fell straight into it; the name attached to Yorkshire by the middle of the eighteenth century, and Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery of 1747 is generally credited with fixing it in print. In its home counties it is often said to have been served first, alone with gravy, to take the edge off appetites before the expensive beef appeared. By the time the Butterick company, a dress-pattern publisher, issued its cook book for American households, spits were long gone and the pudding had to be improvised in the roasting pan, the meat returned to it and the batter given the last half hour with the roast still cooking - which is exactly the compromise this entry describes, and why the instruction about the drippings is the only tricky part of it.